Clouds swallow the harvest moon as the black rain thrashes the sodden paddy-fields of Niigata, Japan’s premier rice-growing district. There will be no tsukimizake tonight, no moon-viewing sake- drinking celebration for Katsuichi Yamaga, a third-generation rice-farmer. “If it doesn’t let up soon, we will lose the rest of our crop,” he says. Read more >

Sado Island: the early summer tourists cluster around the guardrails, peering through binoculars, using their longest lenses, the zoom on their video cameras, to try to capture the creature behind the bars of the massive steel and concrete cages 100 metres away. Read more >

Like an Edo era woodblock, the strange three-masted fishing skiffs with their white sails bulging in the breeze are etched against the bottle green of the Shiranui Sea. The crew, husband-and-wife teams, tough as leather, lean over the side of their utase boats, hauling in nets with a harvest of prawns and ribbon fish. Read more >

After driving round in circles for 30 minutes on the narrow dykes that divide the rice-paddies, the taxi-driver suddenly brakes to a halt and smacks himself on the forehead. “Over there |” he cries, pointing to a grove of gnarled apple-trees. “That must be the place.” Read more >

The ultimate toilet — it’s now official. The Japanese really are different. Their poo doesn’t stink. At least it won’t from next April, when Hiroshi Kobayashi, a design engineer, unveils Japan’s latest contribution to 21st century technology. Read more >

On Wednesday morning, barring any last-minute mishap, Masako Owada, graduate of Harvard and Oxford, career diplomat and the very model of the modern Japanese woman will be driven across the forbidding moat that surrounds Tokyo’s imperial palace, and back more than a thousand years in time. Read more >

Tokyo, Wednesday: The spirits whom Masako Owada promised to honour frowned on her today as the newest princess of the world’s oldest royal family married under a dreary sky before an audience who looked as though they were at a funeral. Read more >

Yokohama, Monday: The bearded priest kneels on his cushion in front of a Buddhist altar. Incense fills the air, as he chants a sutra for the dead, pausing after each verse to strike a small brass gong. Read more >

The man who collects tattooed human skins. Professor Susumu Kato plunges his arms into a blue plastic bin and pulls out what looks like a soggy bundle of technicolour tripe. Read more >

Shigeru Kayano squints through the snowflakes settling on his eyelashes as he looks down towards the dam. “The Japanese are spitting at heaven,” he growls. A kilometre away, muffled by the snowstorm, orange-painted cranes swing against the winter sky and tip-trucks slush along frozen tracks as 2,000 years of Ainu history is slowly buried under 200,000 tonnes of concrete. Read more >

The hunters of Shiretoko. The slaughter of the endangered sea-lion. Rausu: The ancient Ainu tribes called this place Shiretoko – the end of the world. For hundreds of rare and protected sea mammals that is a prophesy about to come true. Read more >

The great Kobe earthquake. How neglect, corruption and incompetence killed thousands. Tokyo, Tuesday: As fires raged out of control through Kobe and after-shocks shook the rubble, the death toll from Japan’s most devastating earthquake in nearly half a century climbed towards 2,000. Read more >

The great Kobe earthquake. How neglect, corruption and incompetence killed thousands. Kobe, Thursday: In the gloom of a shuttered schoolroom, the sickly smell of incense fills the air as Akihiro Harada kneels on his heels beside a still form wrapped in a fluffy floral blanket. Read more >

The fighting dogs of Shikoku. Katsura Beach, Shikoku, Sunday: It is the smell that hits you first as you climb the stairs to the arena – a nauseating cocktail of wet dog, toilets, cheap disinfectant … and something else you can’t quite identify. Read more >

Puppetmasters… any why it didn’t really matter. Although the sound-trucks were blaring in the streets outside and political posters were flapping from every lamp-post, the atmosphere that greeted Japan’s newest mandarin at his inaugural press conference was quiet and deferential. Read more >

The fall of the world’s longest-lasting elected government. The democratic world’s longest-ruling government has finally been overthrown. Now comes the hard part – working out the policies of the new one. Early next month, a nonconservative coalition will be sworn in, the first since 1948. Read more >

The empty orchestra – why Japanese love karaoke. It’s another icy winter’s night at the hot springs resort, on the banks of the Tokachi River in the wilds of Hokkaido, but upstairs in the hotel lounge the lads are feeling no pain. Read more >

The champion negotiator. How Australia’s minerals exporters got screwed. Tokyo, Thursday: He sat, day after day, hour after hour, at a table in a conference room of the Chubu Power and Electric Company, in the gritty industrial city of Nagoya, wearing his salaryman’s uniform of dark suit and tie. Read more >

Suicide mountain – why Japanese are killing themselves. In the green gloom of the forest, a stark sign stands beside the frozen trail. “Wait!” it admonishes. “Think Again! You only have one life – value it.” Read more >

Slow horses… get eaten. Shizunai, Friday: Last November, as the first snow fell on this little fishing town, Mr Kazuo Nishimura stroked the flank of his chestnut mare Darugo Star for the last time and watched her led away to the horse float. Read more >

Slow horses… get eaten. Australian meat – never,” exclaims Mr Yukio Koyama, plonking a plate of finely sliced raw horseflesh on the table, “Here we have only the best quality ‘cherry blossom’ sashimi.” Read more >

Shoko Asahara – the mad guru who poisoned Tokyo. The tour bus pulls up at the side of the road in a rolling green ocean of grassy fields where black and white Friesian cows stand lazily chewing the cud. Autumn showers dance in the sunshine, the weather Japanese call “fox’s wedding rain”. Read more >

Shin Kanemaru – master crook of Japanese politics. Right to the end the corrupt old curmudgeon was unrepentant. From the hospital bed where he was being interrogated, Shin Kanemaru fixed the members of the parliamentary committee with a baleful glare. Read more >

I am,” Ryoichi Sasakawa once famously boasted, “the world’s richest fascist.” There is not much doubt about either claim. With a net worth estimated by Barrons magazine at $1.3 billion, Sasakawa has spent the last third of his long, extraordinary life trying to buy the Nobel Peace Prize by becoming the world’s greatest philanthropist. Read more >

Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways. Luckily, I was house-bound with a broken leg. If it hadn’t been for a skiing accident, I could have been victim number 5,511 of Tokyo’s subway horror. Read more >

I did as I had been told when the Big One struck. I shouted “Jishin da!” (“It’s an earthquake”), I turned off the gas, I propped the door open with a chair, I placed a tea-cosy on my head and dived under the table just as the kitchen floor began to buck like a balsawood raft in a typhoon, the crash of breaking glass and masonry became deafening and flames lit up the window. Read more >

Japan’s secret condemned – on death row – Japan’s secret gulag. Sakae Menda won’t enter the little shrine to pray. It is kimochi warui, he says – it gives him a creepy feeling. Seventy of his friends are buried in this mossy graveyard, under unmarked stones. Read more >

Japan’s women battle for their rights. When Mariko Mitsui, Japan’s best-known female politician, resigned from the Social Democratic Party in disgust at sexual harassment from her fellow MPs, the response was as coarse as it was predictable. Read more >

Japan’s great art bust. Why a lot of the world’s great art has disappeared. From the street, Osaka’s Lake finance company is just another anonymous glass-and-concrete office building. There is no hint that in its basement is stored what was, just a few years ago, one of the most expensive works of art in the world. Read more >

Japan the world’s copy-cats? Patently false. Japan a nation of copycats? Nonsense, says Mr Yoshihisa Ariga, they are the most inventive people in the world – if patent applications are anything to go by. Read more >

Japan learns to love the whale – not eat it. Out there on the green-grey, plankton-rich waters of the North Pacific is where Dr Tadao Furuya, at the helm of a crowded little pleasure boat called the Elm, separates the men from the boys. Read more >

The Godfather bows courteously and offers his visitors hot towels, iced tea and an immaculate business card printed on hand-made paper. Nothing as crass as Murder Inc. No corporate ID at all, in fact. Just his name, his phone number, and his office address in the suburbs of the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto. Read more >

Ichiro Ozawa, the shadow shogun. In bunraku, the colourful and highly stylised classical Japanese puppet-theatre, the most important player on the stage is supposed never to allow himself to be seen. Read more >

How to win back your congregation. Osaka’s Buddhist bar. Osaka, Friday: It’s Thursday night, and Fumihiko Kiyoshi, a Buddhist priest, is slipping into his vestments for another evening’s devotions in downtown Osaka. Read more >

Ichiro Ozawa, the shadow shogun. Buying reform from him would be like buying wart medicine from a toad. Thus the acerbic reaction from one of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party barons last summer when a ragtag eight-party coalition ousted the LDP from power after 38 years of unbroken rule. Read more >

The Catholic priest who inspired Australia’s post-war reconciliation with Japan. Wartime brutality left relations between Australia and Japan in tatters, but a humble priest from Lismore made it his life’s mission to heal the scars of hatred. The nine Buddhist priests, with their shaved heads and sombre vestments, stood before the flower-covered coffin chanting their mournful sutras. Read more >

What more could a grey little Tokyo salariman ask for to liven up his Saturday night? Clad in a mask and bright green tights, Mr Boo strides into the spotlight, lowers himself onto a couch and prepares for his performance with a moment of Zen meditation. Read more >

Corruption casts a shadow over the election campaign. From a wall in Hiroshi Mitsuzuka’s office hangs a small Shinto shrine, carved out of blond cypress wood and designed to bring the blessing of Japan’s ancient gods on his campaign to be re-elected to Parliament. Read more >

Christ didn’t die on the Cross. He came to Japan, lived to 106, and had children. Shingo, Japan, Tuesday: Jesus Christ did not die – at least not on the Cross, not at Calvary and not in AD 33. Read more >

Bullfighting Japanese-style. The bull was big and black and brave and he pawed the ground and tossed his head and bellowed his defiance as the men sweated and wrestled with him. Read more >

Buddhist monks fight to save Kyoto. Japan’s most beautiful city in danger from developers. Painted in the bold black characters of the Japanese script, the notice is propped beside the entrance arch, confronting visitors to Kinkaku-ji, the fabulous Golden Pavilion, the greatest architectural treasure of Japan’s imperial past. Read more >

Bobby-san. Policing the world’s safest society. Yes,” says Inspector Masao Kiyota, “the stories are true. If they pick up a drunk who has made a mess of himself, the police will put him in a cell to sober up, and wash his shirt and pants for him. Read more >

Amakudari (descent from heaven) Japan’s public servants on the gravy train. It was known, said the prosecutors, as the “voice from Heaven”, and it could not be disobeyed. When his bureaucrats heard Fujio Takeuchi whispering a name down the telephone, that was the company that won the construction contract, no matter what. Read more >

A new life for the ancient drama form of Noh. There is a moment when the thin, reedy notes of the flute pipe up, the chorus falls silent, and the old woman falls to her knees clutching the scroll, when you get an inkling of what it would be like to be a Martian newly arrived on Earth. Read more >

A day on the hustings with Mr Green. Campaigning Japanese-style. A dripping man in a wet green suit bows low in front of the gaudy, roaring neon-bathed Dragon pachinko parlour, and croaks out his spiel for the umpteenth time of the morning. Read more >

A day in the life of the Japanese right-wingers. Even inside one of the sinister black trucks, the blast from the 3,200-kilowatt loudspeakers scrambles the brain. “South Korea – get out of Takeshima,” bellows the cheer-leader. “Get out,” chorus the other 30 vans and coaches in the convoy which chokes traffic for nearly a kilometre through Tokyo’s narrow streets. Read more >

He made the best of it as he mingled with the crowned heads of Europe at the glittering banquet to celebrate the royal wedding of 2010, the marriage of Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria to her personal trainer, the dashing Daniel Westling. Read more >